Lehigh Valley Steelhawks switch leagues to offer fans more variety

Local team joins Professional Indoor Football League.

The Lehigh Valley Steelhawks have left the Indoor Football League for the Professional Indoor Football League, a move their general manager called "a match made in heaven."

Executive Vice President and General Manager Mike Clark said Wednesday the fans should like all of the teams the Steelhawks will play starting with the 2013 season, including the Alabama Hammers, Albany Panthers, Columbus Lions, Knoxville Nighthawks, Louisiana Swashbucklers and Richmond Raiders.

"They're not going to be seeing the same teams come to Stabler Arena time and time again," Clark said at a news conference. "You want to put on a good show for the fans and you don't want them to get bored."

Clark said the traveling aspect in the last league was wearing down the players and staff, adding that the shortest road trip would've been to Chicago. He said they started negotiating with their new league at the end of the 2012 season.

"Everything just kind of fell into place at the right time," Clark said. "That's how you know it's meant to be, when it all falls into place at the time that you need it to happen.

"We've been working probably for the last month really hard on this, and the [Professional Indoor Football League] and us seemed like a match made in heaven."

When fans come out to see the Steelhawks next season, Clark said, there will be subtle changes to the style of the game. Head coach Chris Thompson said this shouldn't be a difficult transition for the players.

"There's different ways to do the same thing," Thompson said. "In Indoor Arena Football, you only have so much to do and so much room to work with."

He said the offense has new ways to score points, which has him excited to get started. He also promised that the defense will be just as exciting as last season, if not more.

Thompson said this transition also will help his players, adding that there are only three leagues ahead of their new league — the NFL, the Canadian Football League and the Arena Football League.

"All the guys who play for us all have the same things in mind: They want to move up," Thompson said. "We want to build off of that and continue that, and I think that this move allows us to do that, along with making it more enjoyable for our fans with some new teams coming."

Thompson said he's excited for something else that's new this year — open tryouts, which are scheduled for mid-September to early October.

"We've been getting inundated with talent, guys that want to come here and play here, guys who have been with other indoor leagues out there," he said. "That has us really excited to see what kind of make-up is going to happen for our 2013 football team."